The Internet has made various forms of content available to users across the world. For example, Internet users access websites to view articles, research particular topics of interest, watch videos, etc. Content providers and publishers (e.g. website providers) use the Internet to display articles or news stories, describe offered services, present advertising, and perform a host of other activities. Often, websites include one or more “hyperlinks” that, when clicked via a mouse or cursor, direct an Internet user to additional content or information. As used herein, a “hyperlink” refers to a directly followable reference (i.e. a relation between objects in which one object designates by linking to another object) for use within an electronic text file or hypertext document. As is customary and understood in the art, hyperlinks are typically highlighted or presented in a color different from their surrounding text to indicate to an Internet user that the hyperlink may be accessed for additional content.
Often, hyperlinks are used for linking to and/or displaying videos, images, other websites, articles, advertisements, etc. In some circumstances, content providers use hyperlinks and their associated content to retain Internet users at the providers' sites for longer periods of time. It is generally assumed that the longer a user remains at a website, the more advertising he or she will be exposed to, or the more interested he or she may become in the website content (and thus become a repeat viewer, subscribe to a membership, etc.), and the more popular and profitable the website will become. Accordingly, content publishers often create hyperlinks to videos, images, related articles, etc., in the hopes of keeping users at the publishers' sites for longer periods of time. For example, many content publishers assume that if an Internet user is reading an article on a website, the user would most likely be interested in a video or additional article related to the content of the initial article. Thus, it is highly beneficial to the publisher to present hyperlinks to videos or other content that are contextually relevant to the initial website content in the hopes that the user will interact with the hyperlinked content, and will thereby continue viewing the particular website (and its associated content and advertisements) instead of navigating to another site.
Traditionally, website developers or programmers manually create each hyperlink in an electronic text file by hard-coding the link into the text file. With the advent of electronic news media and the virtually real-time availability of Internet content, it is extremely difficult for programmers to keep up. For example, assuming a particular Internet publisher of new stories desires to link to relevant videos within each of its published news stories, website developers must continue to manually create hyperlinks to related videos each time an additional story is published on the associated website. In a situation in which the content provider publishes new content rapidly and continuously, it can become virtually impossible for programmers to generate hyperlinks for each new content item, much less create links to content that is contextually relevant to the original content item. Also, this manual hyperlink creation can be cumbersome, tedious, inefficient, and time-consuming, as well as a drain on monetary resources that could be used for other business needs within a network environment.
In addition to being time-consuming and inefficient, because hyperlinks are manually created to point to videos or other content chosen by a programmer or website operator, the selected videos are often not relevant or germane to the article of interest. For example, as time passes, videos may become stale or forgotten, and thus highly relevant videos are not associated with a particular article, either because they are old and a programmer has forgotten them, or because the programmer is simply unaware of their existence. Considering the vast amount of content available today over the web, it is infeasible for a programmer to be able to make intelligent decisions regarding linking of content to each new published content item, especially considering the time constraints placed on the programmer. Thus, an Internet user clicking a hyperlink may be limited to viewing content, such as a video or list of videos, that is only marginally related, or not related at all, to the original website content.
Additionally, many hyperlinks are programmed to return a further list of hyperlinks, wherein the hyperlinks in the list are each associated with additional content, videos, websites, etc. Typically, such a list is unranked and unorganized, and is often presented with no discernable structure or organization. For example, the list may simply comprise a catalog of a given website's most current videos, regardless of content. Or, a list may include any and all videos stored on a website's database, with no selection or organization. In these circumstances, a user must tediously search through the plurality of videos or other content to find the content that is most relevant to the article or electronic text file the user is viewing on the web page. This tedious searching is not only annoying, but time-consuming, and there is no assurance that the user will discover videos that are relevant to the original article, or with which the user would have an interest.
For these and many other reasons, there is a continuing need for a system or method that dynamically generates or creates hyperlinks within an electronic text file, and associates those hyperlinks with content that is contextually relevant to the electronic text file. There is a further need for a system or method that ranks lists of hyperlinks associated with an electronic text file according to the relevance of the linked content to the text file.